You have to be a member of the mage guild and have built the Nursery upgrade for your mansion. You may also need to be up a rank or two (through story quests) but it’s available fairly early.
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Does anyone know how to add a custom portrait for the player character? I've been looking around all over the internet and throwing the one image I wanted as player portrait in just about every folder the game has, but it never shows up as an option. The mods I see also keep only having slave portraits. Does anyone here know how I can add my own image as player portrait?
The player uses the same folders as the rest. To change the player portrait click on your character at the bottom(or hit R key) to bring up Personal info page. Then there is 2 buttons there 'set portrait' and 'set body image'. You can change your appearance with those. Image files go into the same folders as the slaves.
It worked! I kept going through the new game, customised start thing and the image never showed up in the list there, so I never thought to go see if I could change the portrait in an existing game. I feel a little stupid. But it works. It's great. Thank you so much!
For my MC, anytime I click on the "show relatives" option my game crashes. Is there a fix to this?
Yeah, there's a text file in the game folders with all the race info and each entry has an "is starting race" (or something like that) variable you can change. I did it a while back cause the mods to enable everything were old and didn't work.
- Dec 22, 2019
- 622
- 907
Thank you so much! I found the file and edited it.
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It's pretty straightforward, you just put the mod folder inside your mods folder (see modding menu in game, IIRC you can just open the location from there) and enable it. I've only ever used Leo's though, maybe others are more complicated I don't know.
You do have to delete your game's backup folder though, which I never saw mentioned anywhere and had to figure out myself. For some weird reason, if you don't, enabling a mod will forcibly revert you to a previous version of the game that cannot run the mod you're installing.
There is a Help button in the Mods menu that has a guide that also covers most of the common problems. Some mods will have their own instructions.
If you need to delete your "backup" folder, then you likely either got a corrupt version of the game or corrupted the files yourself. The game should not be distributed with a "backup" folder included since it creates that folder from your game files when it starts. The mod system is designed on the concept of file editing so it always returns to the backup version when resetting or applying mods.
I admit I am not sure what this is supposed to mean. Not trying to be sassy, I'm just not sure where this is coming from. Are you assuming I wasn't playing the game for a long time before bothering with trying to install a mod?
I downloaded the game from the dev on itch, updated each time a new patch came out, and it does not come with a pre-existing backup folder and never did. And, yes, a new backup folder was created after I deleted the previous one and ran the game again. However, the new backup folder that was created after deleting the old one was no longer an older version of the game, thus fixing the problem. I hope this clears up any confusion.
Like, presumably someone who did just get the game today and is installing mods immediately might not encounter the issue (I've never modded games I haven't played normally yet so it wasn't the first possibility that came to mind), but I thought I'd mention it just in case since nothing was specified. I didn't sleep much last night, but I will take the time to word things more carefully in the future if that's necessary.
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Not quite, I try not to assume that everyone has computer competence (some users don't know what the file explorer is) nor assume that they will download only the best quality versions or use the game files the intended way. As I do not know where the problematic backup folder came from and it is not a standard problem, I tried to address the probable causes. Additionally, while deleting the mod folder was fairly standard practice just prior to v1.0 as the mod system did not handle patches, deleting the backup folder after v1.0 is more likely to cause file corruption as most users do not understand how it works.
So long as the player is starting a new Strive program folder each time, it should be impossible to have an older version of the game within the "backup" folder. The game does not keep older versions of the files nor download anything. Thus the two obvious causes would be a download that accidentally included a "backup" folder or an update process that corrupted the program folder with older files.
The other possibility that now comes to mind would be using the itch.io app to update Strive. The itch.io app uses progressive in-place updates that I have tried to take into account when creating the new versions, but I haven't tested it because I only download the zip archives from itch.io. Between overhauls in how the mod and backup systems work and various mistakes in new versions it is not impossible for someone's backup to have been corrupted by such updates.
It's funny and sad how incorrect some of the reviews of this game can be. The reviewers aren't completely to blame as the game doesn't explain many mechanics, but they tend to do minimal searching for answers and never ask questions on same forums they post. I'd like to address the most recent one by mrttao.
This game does not use a custom game engine, it uses the Godot Engine, a free open source game engine. The gameplay is definitely not balanced nor transparent, but if someone is looking for a power fantasy sandbox about owning slaves then the gameplay is decent. Cash from sex work is complicated compared to other jobs and inexperienced slaves often won't earn much; the Wiki shares their exact mechanics. Ropes are expensive but do not have a 50% chance to wear out, they gain 10%(5% during sex) chance of wearing out after each use, and can't wear out on the first use; Detailed breakdown.
Combat magic is often functional rather than damaging and damage spells are weak when you have less than 3 magic affinity, but beyond that it's completely overpowered to the point where it one-shots most enemies and can finish off the post-story boss in 2 or 3 rounds. Agility is an overpowered stat, but you only need 2 to 4 points before other stats become useful.
Slave guild quests can be easy cash, but don't tend pay that well per day as the quests only refresh every 5 days and many players struggle to figure out how to efficiently prepare slaves.
Upgrade Points for the mansion can be gained several ways; the least effective way being the repeatable quests from the slave guilds. The most effective way is to capture random mid-level slaves (preferably with higher grade), take them back to the mansion, select them and open the Learning Points, spend any Free Attribute Points to get Upgrade Points, break their rebellious state however you wish(jail, rape, spells), raise their obedience to 80+, and sell them to any slave guild for more Upgrade Points. If you don't want to deal with rebelliousness and obedience, you can sell them for Upgrade Points in one of the black markets for a reputation decrease in a random town. The mechanic forces to you capture and sell slaves to progress, customizing them is optional, and it does pretty well at that.
Quests often have multiple paths to acquiring slaves, but usually only one "be nice to them" path for them to gain the Grateful trait. Strange that they would be grateful to those that were nice to them. The wiki usually only covers the "nice" path, when the users aren't getting the facts wrong. Getting all the CGs requires the player to be less nice to them. You are not required to use the aphrodisiac on Emily(besides the CG and a little loyalty it doesn't gain you much), as any of the 3 choices is viable for completing the full quest line and she will be Grateful. But surprise, people tend not to like you when you force sex upon them.
Chloe, the gnome girl, is never rescued from a rape monster, she clumsily fell down a hole and ate berries with an aphrodisiac effect. You can either fuck or masturbate her, the results are the same, only the text is different. Later you can give her an aphrodisiac instead of an antidote to the berries, but this is not the optimal nor the nice path. Simply curing her is the nice and optimal choice.
Indeed the best way to get mana is sex and some people find the sex to be tedious. It's a mini-game that rewards better results with more mana, but it's not obvious in game how to succeed. Two consenting partners with lots of continuous actions is optimal. Almost every race(Humans and Elves being the exceptions) in the game can provide Essence from sex. The chance of gaining an Essence is not 50%, it's 20% per magic affinity for each person. Having sex with demons does not affect your laboratory cost, they are simply 30% cheaper to operate on.
The economy is indeed quite bad, it's far too easy to get cash, yet many players have trouble getting enough. The jobs list which attributes are necessary for good results, but don't tell you how much the pay will be.
The research subject job pays by level and grade, which with it's severe detrimental outcomes is high risk for moderate pay.
The mage order assistant pays quite well for slaves with high magic affinity, otherwise is moderate at best.
A little preparation makes whoring slaves one of the fastest ways to get large amounts of cash, though there is a bit of stress.
Hunting for slaves is by far the most profitable, but requires the most cash to get setup and can take a couple days to "train" them for optimal reward. If you rush it, then it can be the least profitable and most dangerous.
As I said above, Guild quests can be easy cash if you get lucky but overall rather lacking.
There are many characters with images, but there are only 11 girls you can keep with images, not 20. Art is expensive if you are not an artist, so if you need lots of images it's optimal to rely on the community to provide its own art. The art packs are of varying quality and composition, but the most important thing is to use the Improved Random Portraits mod, otherwise the images will almost never match the slave.
Overall, I'd give this review 3/5 stars, it seems like the reviewer rushed through the game just to give a lengthy review. While they got through most of the quests, it seems that they relied heavily on limited portions of an outdated Wiki for their gameplay guide. Thus they did not have a decent understanding of the game mechanics and judged it by their preconceptions of how it should work. It seems that this game's niche appeals did not work for them, which you can't blame them for, but this likely lead them to rush through it just for the art. The spouting of random "facts" about the game without doing a bit research irks me, but many of these are not stated in game so it's understandable how someone who was not paying attention to the mechanics would get them wrong. Also, while not expected of a simple review, I'd like to point out that this game has a modding system with mods posted on the official forums, where modders have changed all sorts of things including the economy balance and sex mechanics.
This game does not use a custom game engine, it uses the Godot Engine, a free open source game engine. The gameplay is definitely not balanced nor transparent, but if someone is looking for a power fantasy sandbox about owning slaves then the gameplay is decent. Cash from sex work is complicated compared to other jobs and inexperienced slaves often won't earn much; the Wiki shares their exact mechanics. Ropes are expensive but do not have a 50% chance to wear out, they gain 10%(5% during sex) chance of wearing out after each use, and can't wear out on the first use; Detailed breakdown.
Combat magic is often functional rather than damaging and damage spells are weak when you have less than 3 magic affinity, but beyond that it's completely overpowered to the point where it one-shots most enemies and can finish off the post-story boss in 2 or 3 rounds. Agility is an overpowered stat, but you only need 2 to 4 points before other stats become useful.
Slave guild quests can be easy cash, but don't tend pay that well per day as the quests only refresh every 5 days and many players struggle to figure out how to efficiently prepare slaves.
Upgrade Points for the mansion can be gained several ways; the least effective way being the repeatable quests from the slave guilds. The most effective way is to capture random mid-level slaves (preferably with higher grade), take them back to the mansion, select them and open the Learning Points, spend any Free Attribute Points to get Upgrade Points, break their rebellious state however you wish(jail, rape, spells), raise their obedience to 80+, and sell them to any slave guild for more Upgrade Points. If you don't want to deal with rebelliousness and obedience, you can sell them for Upgrade Points in one of the black markets for a reputation decrease in a random town. The mechanic forces to you capture and sell slaves to progress, customizing them is optional, and it does pretty well at that.
Quests often have multiple paths to acquiring slaves, but usually only one "be nice to them" path for them to gain the Grateful trait. Strange that they would be grateful to those that were nice to them. The wiki usually only covers the "nice" path, when the users aren't getting the facts wrong. Getting all the CGs requires the player to be less nice to them. You are not required to use the aphrodisiac on Emily(besides the CG and a little loyalty it doesn't gain you much), as any of the 3 choices is viable for completing the full quest line and she will be Grateful. But surprise, people tend not to like you when you force sex upon them.
Chloe, the gnome girl, is never rescued from a rape monster, she clumsily fell down a hole and ate berries with an aphrodisiac effect. You can either fuck or masturbate her, the results are the same, only the text is different. Later you can give her an aphrodisiac instead of an antidote to the berries, but this is not the optimal nor the nice path. Simply curing her is the nice and optimal choice.
Indeed the best way to get mana is sex and some people find the sex to be tedious. It's a mini-game that rewards better results with more mana, but it's not obvious in game how to succeed. Two consenting partners with lots of continuous actions is optimal. Almost every race(Humans and Elves being the exceptions) in the game can provide Essence from sex. The chance of gaining an Essence is not 50%, it's 20% per magic affinity for each person. Having sex with demons does not affect your laboratory cost, they are simply 30% cheaper to operate on.
The economy is indeed quite bad, it's far too easy to get cash, yet many players have trouble getting enough. The jobs list which attributes are necessary for good results, but don't tell you how much the pay will be.
The research subject job pays by level and grade, which with it's severe detrimental outcomes is high risk for moderate pay.
The mage order assistant pays quite well for slaves with high magic affinity, otherwise is moderate at best.
A little preparation makes whoring slaves one of the fastest ways to get large amounts of cash, though there is a bit of stress.
Hunting for slaves is by far the most profitable, but requires the most cash to get setup and can take a couple days to "train" them for optimal reward. If you rush it, then it can be the least profitable and most dangerous.
As I said above, Guild quests can be easy cash if you get lucky but overall rather lacking.
There are many characters with images, but there are only 11 girls you can keep with images, not 20. Art is expensive if you are not an artist, so if you need lots of images it's optimal to rely on the community to provide its own art. The art packs are of varying quality and composition, but the most important thing is to use the Improved Random Portraits mod, otherwise the images will almost never match the slave.
Overall, I'd give this review 3/5 stars, it seems like the reviewer rushed through the game just to give a lengthy review. While they got through most of the quests, it seems that they relied heavily on limited portions of an outdated Wiki for their gameplay guide. Thus they did not have a decent understanding of the game mechanics and judged it by their preconceptions of how it should work. It seems that this game's niche appeals did not work for them, which you can't blame them for, but this likely lead them to rush through it just for the art. The spouting of random "facts" about the game without doing a bit research irks me, but many of these are not stated in game so it's understandable how someone who was not paying attention to the mechanics would get them wrong. Also, while not expected of a simple review, I'd like to point out that this game has a modding system with mods posted on the official forums, where modders have changed all sorts of things including the economy balance and sex mechanics.
- Jun 11, 2021
- 4,521
- 7,511
I have played the game extensively, multiple times at different points in its development.
Speaking of one of the issues here is that the game was just declared finished far too early in the dev cycle. With many systems critically lacking in polish. It felt like the author gave up. For example just before suddenly declaring the game finished they had completely replaced the entire sex system with a new and different sex system that was also bad.
I will accept the correction about the engine. I was not aware that this was not an original engine... I should probably rescind the bonus star I gave for this
As for ropes having a hidden durability stat with variable break rate which is ever increasing... shrug. I explicitly put 50% in question marks and effectively it is about right. it starts out higher but rapidly goes lower.
Your claim that it is most profitable to hunt slaves is completely ignoring the whole time and effort aspect of it.
You need to buy and loadup on prep stuff. then go to the right spot, then fight and win battles, then examine the defeated for quality raw goods (key factor being looks and virginity), then march them back to town
As for actually training them yourself before selling them. Oh lawdy lawd what an utter waste of your time and effort. What kind of masochist would do this? This is supposed to be a game not a job. Most of us already have a real job to work in.
The only slaves worth training are those you intend to keep for yourself. The sheer amount of time and effort and resources spent on it compared to the pitiful gains are just not worth it.
You argue that experienced whores make more money... Yes but this applies to any job. Just level up your guild assistants and then put it into the correct stats. Give them magic tats that raise the relevant stats too.
And the stress mechanic on whores means you need to micromanage it. Which is again a decrease in profit (profit is measured in per player time and player effort spent. if you the player have to spend 10 minutes on a minigame for 1000 in game currency or do 1 click for 100 in game currency then the latter is vastly more profitable even though it gives only 1/10th the amount of in game currency.)
Much better to just train your girls into better guild assitants. (it helps if they have relevant stats) you can rake in the money by hit the end day button instead of all this manual effort. You will make vastly more money per real time spent.
Your claim about the guild missions paying poorly is simply nonsensical. They pay great and will fund your adventures until you manage to get up a setup of guild assistants.
As for resource points, you are flat out wrong. I explicitly mentioned that the guild missions are not the only source, rather that they are the only reliable source. Quests pay your RP once and then never again, there are simply not enough quests in the game to get all the RP you need. Most of your RP will be from guild slave training missions which you complete by just delivering bought slaves.
As for mods fixing it... I am not rating the mods I am rating the base game
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- Jun 11, 2021
- 4,521
- 7,511
Ankmairdor I am rescinding my above admission about you being right on this.
I looked it up and GODOT is not like making an RPGM or Renpy game. the engine analogy is not a very good one as a car has 1 engine. Games have myriad "engines" working together, you got graphics engine, sound engine, etc.
GODOT serves as the base but this is not like an RPGM game where you use GUI to paint a map using tiles.
There had to have been a lot of system building for the final game engine.
This is more akin to someone making a renpy-like game in unity, it requires a lot of engine building.
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Indeed, the switch of systems was quite obvious from the code, though I found this game after the switches had occurred. From talking to Mav, it seems that a couple people(at least one was officially helping with the code) had created impressively complex new systems and halfway through had vanished on him. He should have fixed it, but it was likely beyond his design capabilities and he was burnt out by the accumulating problems within the game. It's not obvious when playing it, but the design is a multilayered pile of shit that only someone with no experience in coding or design would create. As a first game it is quite impressive, but it was unraveling in unimaginable ways.
You did not put the 50% for ropes in question marks, only the one for Essences. Ropes use RNG when wearing out, so it is possible(though unlikely) for someone to get that unlucky many times. The link I provided above gives the statistics of ropes wearing out, and in summary I said that the average cost of a rope is "12.49 gold per use". As the current price is 50 gold, this means that on average a rope will wear out after 4 uses for a 25% chance of wearing out. But there is an important caveat to this: "the players will generally feel that this is biased more towards the less favorable cases because they will tend to notice it more when they are unlucky." I'm still undecided about adding infotext that says how many ropes were recovered, maybe that would help change the perception. I won't claim that it's a good design for a game; it seemed like it would be an interesting system for reusable rope, but a simple 4 use durability system might have been better.
I didn't ignore the time and effort aspects, I mentioned that hunting for slaves took the most time and gold to setup for a method of income. I like optimizing processes so I investigated the most efficient methods for many parts of the game. In order to do that I read most of the game's mechanics directly from the game. Most of it boils down to knowing what each action does, as the mechanics are usually painfully simple. This is why I think that your primary problem with slave hunting appears to be inefficiency due to how the game hides information, rather than slave hunting itself being inefficient. The key factors for determining the quality of raw goods is (from most important to least) level, race, not-uncivilized, beauty, and virginity for gold and only grade for upgrade points. Virginity is a bonus of 15%, which is small compared to the other factors until the slave is worth at least 200 gold. Humans are worth the least with most other races being worth between 50% to 100% more. Usually I just look for level, race, and beauty since I'll just match guild quests if it's convenient.
I gave my process of "training" slaves for sale in the post above, but I have to wonder what your training consists of that makes it so tedious and expensive. The general process for training is unfortunately quite easy because it doesn't need to change much for each slave. They don't have individual personalities or requirements so the variations in treatment comes down to simple quantity rather than approach. Increased grade slows obedience growth and assertive slaves gain obedience from meet interactions in the streets rather than the garden. The only reason to change the approach in training slave is that once you get a moderate amount of gold to get some spells, you hardly even need to use interactions on them, just cast some and throw them in jail or handcuffs. There are initial costs to training slaves, such as buying jail space, uniforms, and handcuffs but you get all those back when you sell the slave.
I argued in favor of sex jobs because Prostitution and Exotic Whore scale at the same rate per stat point as Mage Guild Assistant, gain pay from lewdness(max is the equivalent to 4 magic affinity as Assistant) which can be easily raised in the sex interaction regardless of level, and don't require commoner grade or higher. The major problem with them is that you need them to experience at least one sex interaction after giving consent or their paycheck will be cut in half. The stress can be completely dealt with using sundresses and personal rooms.
The Assistant has the advantages that it benefits from tattoos(as you mentioned) and the pay scales with Wimborn reputation, so as you increase it all slaves working there get the bonus. I tend to choose Public Entertainer for commoner grade slaves as it scales slightly better per stat point and high agility is quite useful for early combat.
Not everyone measures profit in resources per player time, this is that rushing I was mentioning; quite a few players a willing to spend hours to maximize their results per game day. It's a bit funny since many players feel adverse to spamming end day when there is minimal cost(5 gold worth of food per person by default) for doing so, simply because it wastes in game resources like interaction points.
I didn't say that they pay poorly, rather that they "don't tend pay that well per day as the quests only refresh every 5 days". Since once you abandon the idea of limiting your number of days, there is no reason to be inefficient and spend clicks and time looking for a qualifying slave that will only get you 500 to 1000 gold when you could buy any cheap slave with decent stats and put them to work for 30 to 60 gold per day indefinitely. It may seem like meager gains at first, but keep adding more cheap slaves and once you get a cook to auto buy food the low effort scaling income per press of the F key will quickly outstrip any profit rate you hope to achieve from repeatable quests. I keep waiting to see someone make this popular, but it seems like it's too scummy for exploiters. The current exploit on parade seems to be easy unlimited exponential single day profits, but I haven't decided if I want to spend the effort to nerf it since it tends to receive limited attention.
For upgrade points(or what you call "resource points"), I think you are either reinterpreting the meaning of your review or you didn't say what you meant to say. You said "The only effective way to make resource points is to fulfil special training missions from the slavers guild.", which does indeed imply that there are other methods but "effective" is not quite the same as "reliable". Establishing the comparative reliability of guild browsing vs slave hunting is quite difficult even with access to the source code as both methods rely on multiple diverse factors including RNG. I believe that both sides have likely overstepped by presenting their subjective claims of effectiveness on this matter as being more objective than they can be proven to be. I hadn't considered upgrade points from story quests as an option as they aren't a significant amount.
The guild quests provide 3 upgrade points for easy difficulty quests, 6 for medium, and 10 for hard. There will be an average of 2 easy quests and 2 medium quests per slave guild and there are 3 slave guilds. If your luck is high and you manage to complete all of the slave guild quests, then you would on average earn 54 points per 5 days. The slave guilds are supposed to trade out roughly 25% of their slaves per day to keep around around 6 in stock, but I just realized that I put the values in the wrong order so 75% of of the slaves are traded out per day. It seems that a bug has significantly boosted the effectiveness of guild scavenging by cycling slave faster than planned, at least until next version sometime around the new year.
However, if a player does not care about reputation, then I think most people will be hard pressed to compete with the speed of selling slaves from a deeper exploration of the Wimborn outskirts(Prairie is better if stronger) to one of the black markets. Every encounter on the road will have persons to capture and the deeper exploration gives a 70% chance of increasing their grade by one, so most persons will be worth 2 or 3 upgrade points(bandits will mostly be worth 3). Travel out as a decently equipped group of a few level 3 or 4 characters to quickly defeat 2 solo peasants and 3 groups of 3 bandits and get an additional 2 captives from the victims of bandits. That single trip through the deeper outskirts would yield 13 people with an average of at least 2 points each for a total of at least 26 points. 20% of the total stat points of the group would not be assigned and can be converted to upgrade points. A group of 13 people with an average level of 1.5 will have about 39 stat points, which means around 7 additional upgrade points. No worrying about who to capture, just capture them all, convert points, and sell them for around 33 points.
It is interesting that you took the time to judge the portrait packs but not the mods, but I said I'd give you a pass on the mods. Though I'll also note that next version of the game is pre-released as a mod, so the line between mods and base game gets a bit fuzzy.
The simplest way would be to name the unicode font the same as one of the existing fonts and then replace it with the unicode font. You should be able to find a unicode font online. Otherwise you will need to change the name of the font file in the the scene(.tscn and .scn, can only be opened with Godot Editor) and theme(.tres) files.
The game has 3 font files: mainfont.font, textfontbold.font, and title.font